Chapter 129: The find out moment

Sadly for Viv, instant looting didn’t happen since the army pretty much fell where they were, asleep in minutes. She was feeling comparatively fresh since they had gone to great lengths to protect her, so she led Solfis on a hunt for stragglers.

 

All the undead who could have reached them had done so, but there were a few idiots left in the maze of rooms and suspended bridges of Sinur’s Gate’s many towers. Solfis just grabbed her and carried her up if necessary. Honestly, the golem could have done this himself. Viv just wanted to get a look at the place.

 

There was a deceptive amount of room in the narrow city, most of it vertical. It would be interesting to see which dwelling people picked. They found some sealed safes and promising chests but left them to scavenging teams. The most notable discovery was the presence of extensive sewers, all the entry grates blocked by dust. Viv’s first order on the way back was: do not unseal the fucking sewers. Nobody objected. In fact, Sidjin had already led the earth shapers to organize the future water purification system using an empty fountain.

 

“The grate will prevent solids from entering — those can be used as fertilizer. It takes very little mana to keep the flow going for the eight hours required to complete a circle. It will offset the issue of water supply. Namely, you have no water here.”

 

Viv looked at the construct. It was ready and already working, slowly turning an ungodly sludge into clear water.

 

“Very impressive. Did you have it ready?”

 

“Some bastions of the Glastian walls do not have access to freshwater. The college came up with this method. It’s used in most fortresses with casters now.”

 

“Very impressive,” Viv allowed, admiring the makeshift water purification plant.

 

Sidjin chuckled. He looked a bit rough around the edges with scruffy hair and deep pockets under his eyes, but his gaze was teasing.

 

“If I had known of your interest in arcane waste disposal when I was trying to woo you, I could have dazzled you with my conversational skills.”

 

“Lies. I was the one to woo you.”

 

//As fascinating as organic mating rituals are, I believe we have a palace to clear.

 

“Yes yes, let us not forget the treasure!”

 

Not even the greediest of looters would have volunteered to clear a place trapped to the gills by a notoriously bad-tempered lich, and so it fell to Viv, Sidjin, and Solfis to clear the area. They started with the wings of the palace.

 

As with most Harrakan structures, few of the furnishings and artifacts had survived the test of time. The pair found cold ovens and deserted halls, all signs that people used to live here. A side door allowed the palace to be resupplied from either side of the fortress, though they were blocked by a significant amount of passive defense.

 

“Triple helix with a self-feeding reinforcement. It will take some time to pierce through those…Hmm, perhaps by draining that section there?” Sidjin mumbled.

 

“Yes. Or!” Viv replied.

 

She had the group backtrack to the lich’s corpse and checked whatever was left from the punishment. She found what she sought stuck to what was left of its toes.

 

“The key!”

 

Viv loved how offended Sidjin looked at the pedestrian solution.

 

“I’ll let you pick at it later if you want, hey? It’s my palace now.”

 

“Get going…”

 

The trio found a few custom-made undead, all dormant thankfully. It was only a matter of moments to eliminate them. The lich was unsurprisingly unimaginative with its traps. Most were offensive arrays pointed at the head of those breaching a room. Sometimes, it had added variety by aiming at the crotch. Or maybe it feared children. Who knew? It didn’t take long for them to clear the first floor and determine nothing waited in the extensive cellar. Next came the throne room and the way up. And the books.

 

//Please do not read the necromancy books, Your Grace.

 

Viv glared at Solfis by her side.

 

“Trying to censor me, machine?”

 

//I know you are tempted to learn, but I fear you may be tempted to experiment.

//Irlefen mentioned that necromancy was accepted and even ritualized in the Shadow Lands.

//Here, it is an immediate death sentence.

 

“Fine. Oh, I know! We’ll give them to the temple. I bet they love burning those.”

 

“Yes, they do. You know them well,” Sidjin said.

 

“Meh, it’s a universal thing, I think. Ah, there are non-necromancy books… and research notes!”

 

Viv opened an old leather tome decorated with tight yet perfectly legible characters in old Harrakan. A very summary analysis showed that they belonged to the mage who then became a lich — a mage from the south apparently, the wild part of Param.

 

“He was thorough, hmm.”

 

Many of the mage’s musings concerned the transfer of his soul and consciousness to an undead vessel, a process he called transference. There were several references to other books, some of which were also in the tiny library. There were primers on souls by people with weird names, translated from a language she’d never seen. It all felt very useful.

 

“Looks like I could start my research on souls here.”

 

//If you had ten years, I would have advised you to do so to become part-elemental.

 

“But I don’t.”

 

//No.

//You can keep these anyway.

 

“Yeaaa, thanks.”

 

After splitting the books into a ‘keep’ pile, a ‘burn in a religious autodafe’ pile, and a ‘history of music and cooking’ pile they were not quite sure what to do with, the trio crossed the trapped and locked door at the back and found stairs leading up.

 

The stairs were trapped, naturally, but this time there were pits with nasty spikes at the bottom.

 

//I believe this installation was an original one.

 

“Who builds stairs with a trap like that? I would sweat every time thinking I’m only a mechanical failure away from sitting on a stake,” Viv said.

 

“There are always many redundancies to that sort of traps. We can check the mechanism but mostly, they have to be armed and readied first. A failure would mean a failure to activate,” Sidjin explained.

 

“… you had those at home?”

 

“Of course. And acid showers. Oh, the containers are kept dry and empty at all times unless we are under siege.”

 

Viv didn’t know what to say before so much mustache-twirling evil. Though, to be fair, medieval castles had some pretty nasty defenses. She just didn’t like it under her feet at three AM if she went hunting for a cup of warm klod.

 

The upper floor extended up, but Solfis checked and the palace was deserted past the third floor. There were nothing but empty suites, their shattered windows opened to the deleterious air of the deadlands. Only the third floor was occupied.

 

“Well, this is it. Check for traps first,” Viv said on the threshold.

 

The alley behind them was dark, a single window providing very little illumination. They had resorted to magical lights.

 

The alley had been trapped, of course. There were even spells under the relatively-new carpets.

 

The entrance to the first suite was stone, the paint faded over delicately engraved birds. It looked both sturdy and beautiful even with the wings corroded and the beaks cracked. The original protections had not survived, but a new, gruesome construct had replaced it. Viv decided here and there it would have to go. Also, it was trapped.

 

“Allow me,” Sidjin insisted.

 

With the key, Sidjin patiently dismantled the hostile black construct strand by strand, undoing what must have taken days to set up with the patience and care of a bonsai gardener. Viv wondered why he was so delicate until he started rebuilding the original work. Brown mana breathed life back into the abused carving under the archmage’s patient care. He repaired some of the damage, until the dove-like bird that occupied the most space felt almost alive in her mana sight.

 

“Touch it, go on,” Sidjin invited with a smile.

 

Viv caressed the stone back. In a soundless ballet, the birds flew aside to reveal a keyhole.

 

“Wow. Very nice.”

 

“Northern work, from before the exile. It’s mostly lost now. The governor must have been a rich and dedicated man.”

 

“Do we need the key?”

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“No, it’s unlocked.”

 

The pair activated their shields just to be sure, but the gate opened without a sound on what must have been the governor’s personal quarters. Viv couldn’t resist.

 

“Open sesame.”

 

From the receiving room to the bath, from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling, the entire surface was crowded with teetering towers of treasures, piles of metal, weapons, enchanted weapons, vases and jewels. The light reflected on dull gold, but also the colorful shimmer of precious stones. Silver was present too, of course. Towards the center, an improvised canopy bed stood surrounded by rows of gold ingots. Arthur was going to blow a fuse.

 

“This is… so much,” Viv expressed.

 

//More than the vault should have held.

//I am counting over two thousand five hundred gold talents at first glance, and this is without the rest.

//The lich must have accumulated goods for quite some time.

//I did not expect Sinur’s Gate to have so much wealth left.

 

“No, it’s not just the city. Look at those weapons. They should have faded.”

 

Viv pointed at a small pile of mildly enchanted items. There were a few knives with sharp enchantments, but also maces with a brown impact and even an exotic spear with a fire function.

 

“Those were taken from revenants.”

 

Sidjin nodded.

 

“I would have said from caravans, but there are no caravans here or around.”

 

“And to think I believed us efficient in the way we kill the undead for loot. The lich must have found a way to control revenants into giving it valuables. I wonder how.”

 

//Perhaps by using cannier specimens.

//Or perhaps he did it himself.

 

They checked for traps and found none in the vertiginous display of wealth. After making a last check for traps, they brought Lorn and Ban to help plan the transfer.

 

“The temple will want a small donation,” the tall guard captain said after a small delay.

 

“Everyone will get a bonus from this operation, and the wealth will be reinvested in the city anyway. That’s not my question.”

 

“We don’t have the carriage capacity to transport this. We’ll need Farren to come here and inventory the gains before things ‘go missing’.”

 

“We’ll let Baroness Azar handle it,” Ban said, “with you busy I mean, Your Grace. The old b— that smart woman will know what to do.”

 

“I’m trusting her with too much stuff…” Viv grumbled.

 

//Don’t worry.

//I can always find her.

 

***

 

Viv’s solution to the treasure and city problem was to close the door and leave no one behind. Leaving a small team in an empty dead city with a treasure vault was ‘huis clos murder mistery trope three’ so Viv just gave up. Let the dead protect the way.

 

Baroness Azar was waiting for Viv in her tower. She was more than pleased with the news and immediately organized a series of convoys with her heading the first one.

 

“None of your louts know how to tell glass from ruby. Or a genuine Skand vase from a gilded pisspot! I have stories. And evidence. But I digress, this cash injection comes at a perfect time. Enorian interests are baring themselves to every bank under the sun to fund their reconstruction.”

 

“I’m not comfortable with investing public funds in foreign land, especially — “

 

“Kindly do not take me for a complete idiot, young lady. We will, of course, dangle competitive interest rates to all those young, talented entrepreneurs willing to launch themselves now that the country is safer. Harrak, the past and the future. Reclaim your legacy and so on, all that nice hogwash you tell yourself. You can count on me.”

 

“Good, because I will be… very engaged in the coming months.”

 

Azar gave Viv a sharp glance from over the documents she was already compiling. Viv felt that she was the one being examined and debriefed, despite her high mental stats. In a way, it was comforting to know Azar was on their side. Her luck really worked overtime attracting overqualified weirdos.

 

“The war and your transformation?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Your kingdom is too young to be orphaned, darling. Return to us.”